CHAPTER LIII.
It is a curious sensation to return, after a long interval, to the home of one’s youth, especially if one has had very great ideas of that home, and thought it magnificent. Even a short absence changes most curiously this first conception of grandeur. When Kate ran into Langton-Courtenay on her return, rushing through the row of new servants, who bowed and curtseyed in the hall, her sense of mortification and disappointment was intense. Everything had shrunken somehow; the rooms were smaller, the ceilings lower, the whole place diminished. Were these the rooms which she had compared in her mind with the suite in which the English ambassadress gave her ball? Kate stood aghast, blushing up to the roots of her hair, and felt so mortified that she did not remember to do the honours to her aunt and cousin. When she recollected, she went back to where they had placed themselves in the great old hall, round the great fireplace. There was a comfortable old-fashioned settle by it, and on this Mrs. Anderson had seated herself, to warm her frozen fingers, and give Kate time to recover herself.
‘I have not the least doubt we shall find everything very comfortable,’ she said to the new housekeeper, who stood before her, curtseying in her rustling silk gown, and wondering already whether she was to have three mistresses, or which was to be the ‘lady of the house.’ Mrs. Spigot felt instinctively that the place was not likely to suit her, when Kate ran against the new housemaid, and made the new butler (Mr. Spigot) fall back out of her way. This was not a dignified beginning for a young lady coming home; and if the aunt was to be mistress, it was evident that the situation would not be what the housekeeper thought.
‘My niece is a little excited by coming home,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘To-morrow Miss Courtenay will be rested, and able to notice you all.’ And she nodded to the servants, and waved her hand, dismissing them. If a feeling passed through Mrs. Anderson’s mind, as she did so, that this was truly the position that she ought to have filled, and that Kate, a chit of nineteen, was not half so well endowed for it by nature as she herself would have been, who can blame her? She gave a sigh at this thought, and then smiled graciously as the servants went away, and felt that to have such a house, and so many servants under her control, even provisionally, would be pleasant. The housemaids thought her a very affable lady; but the upper servants were not so enthusiastic. Mrs. Anderson had mounted upon her very highest horse. She had put away all the vagaries of Italian life, and settled down into the very blandest of British matrons. She talked again about proper feeling, and a regard for the opinions of society. She had resumed all the caressing and instructive ways which, at the very beginning of their intercourse, she had adopted with Kate. And all these sentiments and habits came back so readily that there were moments in which she asked herself, ‘Had she ever been in Italy at all?’ But yes, alas, yes! Never, if she lived a thousand years, could she forget the three months just past.
Kate came back with some confusion to the hall, to find Ombra kneeling on the great white sheepskin mat before the fire; while Mrs. Anderson sat benignly on the settle, throwing off her shawls, and loosing her bonnet. Ombra’s veil was thrown quite back; the ruddy glow threw a pink reflection on her face, and her eyes seemed to have thawed in the cheery, warm radiance. They were bright, and there seemed to be a little moisture in them. She held out her hand to her cousin, and drew her down beside her.
‘This is the warmest place,’ said Ombra; ‘and your hands are like ice, Kate. But how warm it feels to be at home in England! and I like your house—it looks as if it had never been anything but a home.’
‘It is delightful!—it is much larger and handsomer than I supposed,’ said Mrs. Anderson, from the settle. ‘With such a place to come home to, dear, I think you may be pardoned a little sensation of pride.’
‘Oh! do you think so?’ said Kate, gratified. ‘I am so very glad you like it. It seems to me so insignificant, after all we have seen. I used to think it was the biggest, the finest, the most delightful house in the world; but if you only knew how the roofs have come down, and the rooms have shrunk!—I feel as if I could both laugh and cry.’
‘That is quite natural—quite natural. Kate, I have sent the servants away. I thought you would be better able to see them to-morrow,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘But when you have warmed yourself, I think we may ask for Mrs. Spigot again, and go over the rooms, and see which we are to live in. It will not be necessary to open the whole house for us three, especially in Winter. Besides our bed-rooms and the dining-room, I think a snug little room that we can make ourselves comfortable in—that will be warm, and not too large——’
It pleased Mrs. Anderson to sit there in the warmth and stillness, and make all these suggestions. The big house gave her a sensible pleasure. It was delicious to think that a small room might be chosen for comfort, while there were miles of larger ones all at her orders. She smiled and beamed upon the two girls on the hearth. And indeed it was a pretty picture—Kate began to glow and brighten, with her hat off, and her bright hair shining in the firelight. Her travelling-dress was trimmed round the throat with white fur, like a bird’s plumage, which caught a pink tinge too from the firelight, and seemed to caress her, nestling against her pretty cheek. The journey, and the arrival, and all the excitement had driven away, for the moment at least, all mists and clouds, and there was a pretty conflict in her face—half pleasure to be at home, half whimsical discontent with home. Ombra with her veil quite back, and her face cleared also of some other mystical veil, had her hand on Kate’s shoulder, and was looking at her kindly, almost tenderly; and one of Ombra’s cheeks was getting more than pink—it was crimson in the genial glow; she held up her hand to shield it, which looked transparent against the firelight. Mrs. Anderson looked very complacently, very fondly at both. Now that everything was over, she said to herself, and they had got home, surely at least a little interval of calm might come. She shut her eyes and her ears, and refused to look forward, refused to think of the seeds sown, and the results that must come from them. She had been carried away to permit and even sanction many things that her conscience disapproved; but perhaps the Fates would exact no vengeance this time—perhaps all would go well. She looked at Ombra, and it seemed to her that her child, after so many agitations, looked happy—yes, really happy—not with feverish joy or excitement, but with a genial quiet that belonged to home. Oh! if it might be so?—and why might it not be so?—at least for a time.